SAMPLES OF THE BULK
"You do think they'll be happy?" Mrs. Selford asked a little
apprehensively. Her manner craved reassurance.
"Why put that question to me--to me, of all people? Is it on the
principle of knowing the worst? If even a cynic like me thinks they'll
be happy, the prospect will be very promising--is that it?"
"Goodness knows I don't expect the ideal! I've never had it myself. Oh,
I don't see why I need pretend with you, and I shouldn't deceive you if
I did. I've never had the ideal myself, and I don't expect it for Anna.
We've seen too much in our set to expect the ideal. And sometimes I
can't quite make Anna out." Mrs. Selford was evidently uneasy. "She gets
on better with her father than with me now; and I think I get on better
with Walter than Richard does."
"Young Walter has a way with him," smiled Caylesham.
"I hope we shan't get into opposite camps and quarrel. Richard and I
have been such good friends lately. And then, of course----" She
hesitated a little. "Of course there may be a slight awkwardness here
and there."
Caylesham understood the covert allusion; the marriage might make
matters difficult with the Imasons.
"The young folks will probably make their own friends. Our old set's
rather broken up one way and the other, isn't it? Not that I was ever a
full member of it."
"We've always been glad to see you," she murmured absently.
"On the whole I feel equal to encouraging you to a certain extent," he
said, standing before the fire. "Anna will be angry pretty often, but I
don't think she will be, or need be, unhappy. She doesn't take things to
heart too readily, does she?"
"No, she doesn't."
The assent hardly sounded like praise of her daughter.
"Well, that's a good thing. And she's got lots of pluck and a will of
her own."
"Oh, yes, she's got that!"
"From time to time he'll think himself in love with somebody. You're
prepared for that, of course? But it's only his way. She'll have to
indulge him a little--let the string out a little here and there; but
she'll always have him under control. Brains do count, and she's got
them all. And she won't expect romance all the time."
"You said you were going to be encouraging."
"I am being encouraging," Caylesham insisted.
"Oh, I shouldn't think it so bad if we were talking about myself. But
when it's a question of one's child----"
"One is always unreasonable? Precisely. The nature of the business isn't
going to change in the next generation. But I maintain that I'm
encouraging--for Anna, anyhow. I rather fancy Master Blake will miss his
liberty more than he thinks. But that'll be just what he needs. So from
a moral point of view I'm encouraging there too."
"Of course you don't understand the feeling of responsibility, the fear
that if she's the--the least bit hard, it may be because of her bringing
up."
"Don't be remorseful, Mrs. Selford. It's the most unprofitable of
emotions."
He had preached the same doctrine to Christine.
"When it's too late to go back?"
"And that's always." He looked down at her with a cheerful smile.
"That's for your private ear. Don't tell the children. Walter Blake's
quite great on remorse."
Mrs. Selford laughed rather ruefully.
"I suppose it'll turn out as well as most things. Do you know any
thoroughly happy couples?"
"Very hard to say. One isn't behind the scenes. But I'm inclined to
think I do. Oh, ecstasies aren't for this world, you know--not permanent
ecstasies. You might as well have permanent hysterics! And, as you're
aware, there are no marriages in heaven. So perhaps there's no heaven in
marriages either. That would seem to be plausible reasoning, wouldn't
it? But they'll be all right; they'll learn one another's paces."
"I can't help wishing she seemed more in love."
"Perhaps she will be when she flirts with somebody else. Don't frown!
I'm not a pessimist. If I don't always look for happiness by the
ordinary roads, I often discern it along quite unexpected routes."
"It's pleasant to see people start by being in love."
"How eternally sentimental we are! Well, yes, it is. But capacities
differ. I daresay she doesn't know she's deficient, and she certainly
won't imagine that her mother has given her away."
"I suppose I deserve that, but I had to talk to somebody. And really
it's best to choose a man; sometimes it stops there then."
"Why not your husband? No? Ah, he has too many opportunities of
reminding you of the indiscretion! You were quite right to talk to me.
We shall look on at what happens with all the greater interest because
we've discussed it. And, as I've said, I'm decidedly hopeful."
"We might have developed her affections when she was a child. I'm sure
we might."
"Oh, I shall go! You send for a clergyman!"
Mrs. Selford shook her head sadly, even while she smiled. She could not
be beguiled from her idea, nor from the remorse that it brought. The
pictures, the dogs, and sentimental squabbling with her husband had
figured too largely in the household; she connected with this fact the
disposition which she found in Anna.
"Being a bit hard isn't a bad thing for your happiness," Caylesham added
as a last consolation.
Anna herself came in. No consciousness of deficiency seemed to afflict
her; she felt no need of a development of her affections or of being
more in love with Walter Blake. On the contrary she exhibited to
Caylesham's shrewd eyes a remarkable picture of efficiency and of
contentment. She had known what she wanted, she had discerned what means
to use in order to get it, and she had achieved it. A perfect
self-confidence assured her that she would be successful in dealing with
it; her serene air, her trim figure and decisive movements gave the
impression that here at least was a mortal who, if she did not deserve
success, could command it. Caylesham looked on her with
admiration--rather that than liking--as he acknowledged her very
considerable qualities. The thing which was wanting was what in a
picture he would have called "atmosphere." But here again her luck came
in, or, rather, her clear vision; it was not fair to call it luck. The
man she had pitched upon--that was fair, and Caylesham declined to
withdraw the expression--at the time when she pitched upon him, was in a
panic about "atmosphere." He had found too much of it elsewhere, and was
uneasy about it in himself. He was not asking for softness, for
tenderness, for ready accessibility to emotion or to waves of feeling.
Her cleverness had turned to account even the drawback which made
Caylesham, in the midst of his commendation, conscious that he would not
choose to be her husband--or perhaps her son either.
"You'll make a splendid head of the family," he told her cheerfully.
"You'll keep them all in most excellent order."
She chose to consider that he had exercised a bad influence over Walter
Blake, and treated him distantly. Caylesham supported the entire
injustice of her implied charge with good-humour.
"You're not fond of excellent order, I suppose?" she asked.
"In others," said he, smiling. "May I come and see it in your house
sometimes? I promise not to disturb it."
"I don't think you could."
"She taunts me with my advancing years," he complained to Mrs. Selford.
Anna's disapproval of him was marked; it increased his amusement at the
life which lay before Walter Blake. Blake would want to disturb
excellent order sometimes; he would be indulged in that proclivity to a
strictly limited extent. If Grantley Imason were a revengeful man, this
marriage ought to cause him a great deal of pleasure. Caylesham, while
compelled to approve by his reason, could not help deploring in his
heart. He saw arising an ultra-British household, clad in the very
buckram of propriety. Who could say that morality did not reign in the
world when such a nemesis as this awaited Walter Blake, or that morality
had not a humour of its own when Walter Blake accepted the nemesis with
enthusiasm? Yet the state of things was not unusual--a fair sample of a
bulk of considerable size. Caylesham went away smiling at it, wondering
at it, in the depths of his soul a trifle appalled at it. It seemed to
him rather inhuman; but perhaps his idea of humanity had gone a trifle
far in the opposite direction.
And, after all, could not Walter Blake supply the other element? There
was plenty of softness about him, and the waves of feeling were by no
means wanting in frequency or volume. Considering this question,
Caylesham professed himself rather at a loss. He would have to wait and
look on. But would he hear or see much? Anna had evidently put him under
a ban, and he believed that her edicts would obtain obedience in the
future. So far as he could see now, he had a vision of the waves stilled
to rest, of the gleam of frost forming upon them, of an ice-bound sea.
Now he felt it in his heart to be sorry for young Blake. Not because
there was any injustice. The nemesis was eminently, and even
ludicrously, just. He felt sorry precisely because it was so just. He
was always sorry for sinners who had to pay the penalty of their deeds;
then a fellow-feeling went out to them. Of course they were fools to
grumble. The one wisdom he claimed for himself was not grumbling at the
bill.
He paid another visit that day, under an impulse of friendliness, and
perhaps of curiosity too. He went to Tom Courtland's, and found himself
repaid for his trouble by Tom's cordiality of greeting. The Courtland
family was in the turmoil of moving; they had to go to a much smaller
house, and to reduce the establishment greatly. But the worries of a
move and the prospect of comparative poverty--there was very little left
besides Harriet's moderate dowry--were accepted by Tom very cheerfully,
and by the children with glee; they were delighted to be told that there
would be no more menservants and fewer maids, and that they would have
to learn to shift for themselves as much and as soon as possible. They
were glad to be rid of "this great gloomy house," over which the shadow
of calamity still brooded.
"The children don't like to pass Lady Harriet's door at night," Suzette
whispered in an aside to Caylesham.
Tom himself seemed younger and more sprightly; and he was the slave of
his little girls. His grey hair, the lines on his face, and the enduring
scar on Sophy's brow spoke of the sorrow which had been; but the sorrow
had given place to peace--and it might be that some day peace would turn
to joy. For there was much youth there, and, where youth is, joy must
come, if only it be given a fair chance.
"We're rather in narrow circumstances, of course," Tom explained when
Suzette and the children were out of earshot. "That's because I made
such an ass of myself."
"Well, don't be hard on Flora. She was a good friend to you."
"I'm not blaming her; it's myself, Frank. I ought to have remembered the
children. But we can rub along, and perhaps I shall get a berth some
day."
Caylesham did not think that prospect a very probable one, but he
dissembled and told Tom that his old political friends ought certainly
to do something for him:
"Because it never came to an absolute public row, did it?"
"Everybody knew," sighed Tom, with a relapse into despondency.
"Anyhow you won't starve," Caylesham said with a laugh. "I reckon you
must have above a thousand a year?"
"It's not much; but--well, I tell you what, Frank, Suzette Bligh's
pretty nearly as good as another five hundred, and I only pay her
seventy pounds a year. You wouldn't believe what a manager that little
woman is! She makes everything go twice as far as it did, and has the
house so neat too. Upon my soul, I don't notice any difference, except
that I've dropped my champagne."
"Well, with champagne what it mostly is nowadays, that's no great loss,
my boy, and I'm glad you've struck it rich with Miss Bligh."
"We should be lost without her. I don't know what the children would do,
or what I should do with them, but for her. One good thing poor Harriet
did, anyhow, was to bring her here."
Yes; but if Harriet had known how it was to fall out, had foreseen how
Suzette was to reign in her stead, and with what joy the change of
government would be greeted! Caylesham imagined, with a conscious
faintness of fancy, the tempest which would have arisen, and how short a
shrift would have been meted out to Suzette and all her adherents. He
really hoped that poor Harriet, who had suffered enough for her faults,
was not in any position in which she could be aware of what had
happened; it would be to her (unless some great transformation had been
wrought) too hard and unendurable a punishment.
"The children are changed creatures, Frank," Tom went on. "We don't try
to repress them, you know. That would be hypocrisy, wouldn't it, under
the circumstances? The best thing is for them to forget. Suzette says
so, and I quite agree."
Suzette, it seemed, could achieve an epitaph of stinging quality--quite
without meaning it, of course. Caylesham agreed that the best thing the
girls could do was to forget their mother.
"So we let them make a row, and they're to go out of mourning very soon.
That's what Suzette advises."
A merciful Providence must spare even poor Harriet this! She was to be
forgotten--almost by a violent process of obliteration; and this by
Suzette's decree--an all-powerful decree of gentle inconspicuous
Suzette's.
The man of experience foresaw. Weak kindly Tom Courtland must always
have a woman to fend for him. Because Harriet had not filled that part,
ruin had come. The children must have a guardian and a guide in feminine
affairs. The bonds were becoming too strong to be broken--so strong that
the very idea of their ever being broken would cause terror, and impel
steps to make them formally permanent. Here was another sample from a
bulk of goodly dimensions, one of those by no means rare cases where a
woman who would not otherwise have got a husband--or perhaps taken
one--passes through the stage of the indispensable spinster to the
position of the inevitable wife. Caylesham saw the process begun, and he
was glad to see it. It was the best thing that could happen to Tom, and
for the girls the best way of piecing together the fragments of that
home-life which Harriet's cruel rage had shattered. Only they were all
still so delightfully unconscious of what seemed so obvious to an
outsider with his eyes about him. Caylesham smiled at their blindness,
and took care not to disturb Tom's mind, or to rally him about his
harping on Suzette's name and Suzette's advice. He was quite content to
leave the matter to its natural course. But coming, as it did, on the
top of his visit to the Selfords' and of his impressions of what he had
seen there, it raised another reflection in his mind. How many roads
there were to Rome! And most of them well trodden. Primitive instinct or
romantic passion was only one of many--anyhow if the test of
predominating influence were taken. It was not the prevailing factor
with Anna Selford; it would hardly count at all with Tom and Suzette.
Since then the origin was so various, what wonder the result was various
too! Various results were even expected, aimed at, desired. Add to that
cause of variation human error and the resources of the unexpected, and
the field of chance spread infinitely wide. Save for the purpose of
being amusing--an end to which all is justifiable that is not actually
unseemly--only a fool or a boy would generalise about the legal state
which was the outcome of such heterogeneous persons, aims, and tempers.
But then at the end old nature--persistent old nature--would come back
and give the thing a twist in her direction, with her babies and her
nursery. She made confusion worse confounded, and piled incongruity on
incongruity. But she would do it, and a pretty mixture was the general
result. To make his old metaphor of double harness at all adequate to
the subject which it sought to express, you must suppose many breeds of
horses, and a great deal of very uneven and very unsuitable pairing of
them by the grooms. It was probably all necessary, but the outcome was
decidedly odd.
"It's all been pretty bad. I can't bear to think of poor Harriet, and
I'm not fond of thinking about myself," said Tom Courtland, rubbing his
bristly hair. "But the worst of it's over now. There's peace anyhow,
Frank, and at least the children were always fond of me."
"You're going to get along first-rate," Caylesham assured him. "And mind
you make Miss Suzette stick to you. She's a rare woman; I can see that."
"You're a good chap, Frank. You stick to your friends. You stuck to me
all through."
"Much less trouble than dropping you, old fellow."
"That's rot!"
"Well, perhaps it is. After all, if I hadn't some of the minor virtues,
I should be hardly human, should I? They're just as essential as the
minor vices."
"If you ever see Flora, tell her--well, you'll know what to tell her."
"I'll say something kind. Good-bye, Tom. I'm glad to find you so
cheerful."
The girls came round him to say good-bye. He kissed them, and gave each
of them half a crown. He used to explain that he always tipped children
because in after years he was thus made sure of finding somebody to
defend his character in pretty nearly any company. Since, however, this
was absolutely the only step he ever took with any such end in view, the
explanation was often received with scepticism. His action was more
probably the outcome of one of his minor virtues.
"How kind you are to children! What a pity you're a bachelor!" smiled
Suzette.
"Thanks! I don't often get such a testimonial," he said, risking a
whimsical lift of his brows for Tom Courtland's eye.
He had been seeking impressions of marriage. Chance gave him one more
than he had looked for or desired. Just outside Tom Courtland's, as he
was going away, he ran plump into John Fanshaw, who was making for the
house. There was no avoiding him this time. The men had not met since
Caylesham lent John money and John learnt from Harriet Courtland the
truth of what the man from whom he took the money had done. But there
had been no rupture between them. Civil notes had been written--on
John's side even grateful notes--as the business transaction between
them necessitated. And both had a part to play--the same part, the part
of ignorance. Caylesham must play it for Christine. John had to assume
it on his own account, for his own self-respect. The last shred of his
pride hung on the assumption that, though he knew, and though Christine
was aware of his knowledge, Caylesham at least believed him ignorant.
But heavy John Fanshaw was a clumsy hand at make-believe. His
cordiality was hesitating, fumbling, obviously insincere; his
unhappiness in his part very apparent. Caylesham cut short his effort to
express gratitude, saying, "You shall do anything in the world except
thank me!" and went on to ask after Christine in the most natural manner
in the world.
"She's been a little--a little seedy, and has gone down to stay with the
Imasons for a bit," John explained, taking care not to look at
Caylesham.
"Oh, I hope she'll be all right soon! Give her my remembrances when you
write--or perhaps you'll be running down?"
"I don't know. It depends on business."
"Come, you'll take Christmas off, anyhow?"
Then John took refuge in talking about Tom Courtland. But his mind was
far from Tom. He managed at last to look Caylesham in the face, and grew
more amazed at his perfect ease and composure. He was acutely conscious
of giving exactly the opposite impression himself, acutely fearful that
he was betraying that hidden knowledge of his. Actuated by this fear, he
tried to increase his cordiality, hitting wildly at the mark, and
indulging in forced friendliness and even forced jocosity.
Caylesham met every effort with just the right tone, precisely the right
amount of effusiveness. He had taken a very hard view of what John had
done--harder than he could contrive to take of what he himself had--and
had expressed it vigorously to Christine. But now he found himself full
of pity for poor John. The sight of the man fighting for the remnant of
his pride and self-respect was pathetic. And John did it so lamentably
ill.
"You're a paragon of a debtor," Caylesham told him, when he harked back
to the money again. "My money's a deal safer in your hands than in my
own. I'm more in your debt than you are in mine."
"You shall have every farthing the first day I can manage it."
His eagerness told Caylesham what a burden on his soul the indebtedness
was. It was impossible to ignore altogether what was so plainly shown;
but he turned the point of it, saying:
"I know how punctilious you men of business are. I wish fellows were
always the same in racing. I'm ready to take it as soon as you're ready
to pay, and to wait till you're ready."
"I shan't ask you to wait a day," John assured him.
Enough had passed for civility; Caylesham was eager to get away--not for
his own sake so much as for John's.
"By Jove, I've got an appointment!" he exclaimed suddenly, diving for
his watch. "Half-past six! Oh, I must jump into a cab!" He held the
watch in one hand, and hailed a cab with his stick. "Good-bye, old
fellow," he said, turning away. He had seen John begin to put out his
hand in a hesitating reluctant way. He would have liked to shake hands
himself, but he knew John hated to do it. John made a last demonstration
of ignorance.
"Come and see us some day!" he called almost jovially.
"Yes, I will some day before long," Caylesham shouted back from the step
of his hansom.
As he drove off, John was still standing on the pavement, waving a hand
to him. Caylesham drove round the corner, then got down again, and
pursued his way on foot.
He was quite clear in his own mind that John took the thing
unnecessarily hard, but he was genuinely sorry that John should so take
it. Indeed John's distress raised an unusually acute sense of discomfort
in him. Nor could he take any pride in the tact with which he himself
had steered the course of the interview. He could not avoid the
conclusion that to John he must have seemed a hypocrite more
accomplished than one would wish to be considered in the arts of
hypocrisy. He had hitherto managed so well that he had not been forced
into such situations; he had been obliged to lie only in his actions,
and had not come so near having to lie in explicit words. He did not
like the experience, and shook his head impatiently as he walked along.
It occurred to him that since marriage was in its own nature so
difficult and risky a thing as he had already decided, it was hardly
fair for third persons to step in and complicate it more. He had to get
at any state of mind resembling penitence by roads of his own; the
ordinary approaches were overgrown and impassable from neglect. But in
view of John's distress and of the pain which had come on Christine, and
on a realisation of the unpleasant perfection of art which he himself
had been compelled (and able) to exhibit, he achieved the impression
that he had better have left such things alone--well, at any rate where
honest old duffers as John Fanshaw were involved in the case. Having got
so far, he might not unnaturally have considered whether he should
remodel his way of life.
But he was not the man to suffer a sudden conversion under the stress of
emotion or of a particular impression. His unsparing clearness of vision
and honesty of intellect forbade that.
"I shall get better when I'm too old for anything else," he told himself
with a rather bitter smile. "I suppose I ought to thank God that the
time's not far off now."
It was not much of an effort in the way of that unprofitable emotion
against which he had warned Christine Fanshaw and Janet Selford; but it
was enough to make him take a rather different view, if not of himself,
at least of old John Fanshaw. He decided that he had been too hard on
John; and at the back of his mind was a notion that he had been rather
hard on Christine too. In this case it seemed to him that he was getting
off too cheaply. John and Christine were paying all the bill--at least a
disproportionate amount. The upshot of it all was expressed in his
exclamation:
"I don't want the money. I wish to heaven old John wouldn't pay me
back!"
He would have felt easier for a little more demerit in John. It is
probable, though his philosophising did not lead him so far as this
conclusion, that he too was a sample, and from a bulk not inconsiderable
in quantity. Where it is possible, we prefer that the people we have
injured should turn out to have deserved injury from somebody.